10 – The Sense of Mystery

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To keep his practice alive, the seeker must stimulate and renew his interest by cultivating a sense of mystery.
To keep the sense of mystery within oneself is to feel that what we are seeking is infinitely beyond us; that the meaning of the practice and the insights which we gain from it is always to be called into question so we do not limit ourselves to predetermined answers, even those given by Salim. He always kept to a very high degree the sense of mystery of the Universe within himself, the mystery of our presence on this Earth, of this work on ourselves, and so on.

Fruits of Awakening –

Excerpts from Chapter 1 – The Sense of Mystery

To help her in such an important step, such a serious and out-of-the-ordinary step that, habitually, remains beyond the reach of most men and women inhabiting this Earth, she needs—without allowing herself to fall into puerile imaginings—to cultivate a sense of mystery concerning what she is seeking to achieve spiritually.

Indeed the quest for her Origin—or, in other terms, that whence she emerged and into which she will be reabsorbed when the fatal hour arises for her when she will have to quit the existential world—will lead to her finding herself faced with the enigma of the Infinite within her. (…/)

It is necessary to insist on the fact that all the higher states of being and consciousness that she may experience at certain moments during her meditation sessions or during the efforts she makes in the course of her activities in external life, by their nature, can only remain, for a long time yet, enigmas that are beyond her. Very fortunately, this aspect of her being remains, to a greater or lesser degree, a mystery beyond her human capacity for understanding, because as long as the Infinite remains a enigma that escapes her, she will be encouraged not to neglect her duty towards this aspect of her double nature, in other words, to try to keep living within her this Ineffable, Impersonal Feeling to which she has awakened.

She needs to realize that it is of the highest importance for her to carry continually within herself a sense of mystery, so that her meditation does not fall little by little into a routine and banal practice, as is the case for so many seekers, including in a good number of monasteries and ashrams in the West, as well as the East—a routine that tragically obstructs the path that would lead them to the discovery of their Celestial Origin. (…/)

In order for the aspirant to be supported in her efforts to remain inwardly deeply present and conscious of herself, the sense of mystery must always remain alive within her, accompanying her everywhere and in all that she does: the mystery of this enigmatic silent call that makes itself felt within her at the most unexpected moments and that is beyond her, the mystery of the Impersonal that she carries within her and that she wishes to recognize and apprehend, the mystery of the Cosmos, the mystery of the aim of Creation, the mystery of her own life, of her consciousness, of her mind, and so on.

At bottom, everything that exists in the manifest world is a mystery.

If, at certain moments, she succeeds in becoming conscious of herself in a way that she cannot experience while she is trapped in her habitual condition of being, she will discover that, without knowing it ordinarily, there is not an instant of her life when she is not confronted with one mystery or another: the mystery of her mind, her faculty of reflection, her capacity to feel compassion, joy, pain, or wonder when she contemplates the night sky scattered with celestial stars spread across the incommensurable space of the Cosmos, evoking within her she knows not what strange and inexplicable feeling or silent memory concerning, above all, the troubling question of her Origin. (…/)

The seeker will note that at the moment she awakens a little to the mystery of the Impersonal she harbors within her, a change will take place at the same time in her feeling and, reciprocally, the change in her feeling, when she succeeds in achieving it, contributes to arousing the sense of mystery within her being. Nevertheless, she will need to realize that neither one nor the other can occur in her passively; her conscious participation is necessary to activate them.